Information Revolution: the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996
| Publication year | 1996 |
| Pages | 17 |
| Citation | Vol. 25 No. 4 Pg. 17 |
1996, April, Pg. 17. Information Revolution: The Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996
To borrow the venerable analogy for revolution from I Ching, there is new fire in the flood of communication and information technologies in the country. On February 8, 1996, President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 ("1996 Act"),(fn1) the first major revision of federal communications law in sixty-two years. This article provides an introduction to the new Act in the context of prior law.
As technology has evolved over most of this century, the competing needs of the different communications industries has tended toward legislative paralysis. The centerpiece of federal communications law was the Communications Act of 1934, a wide-ranging statute designed "to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, a rapid, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service."(fn2) Controversy has contained the intervening enactments essentially to minor tuneups, and legislative guideposts have been few.
In 1984, a swiftly developing cable industry and battles between operators and local jurisdictions over public rights-of-way produced the Cable Communications Policy Act.(fn3) In 1992, concerns regarding customer service, increasing cable dominance over broadcast networks and rapidly rising cable service rates led to the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act,(fn4) the sole override of a veto during the Bush administration and a retreat from the 1984 Act, which was widely viewed as partial to cable interests. The 1992 Act was structured primarily as a rewrite of 1984's Cable Communications Policy Act.
The 1996 Act represents the most comprehensive and ambitious rewrite of the Communications Act to date. Whether it will prove as far-reaching as its predecessor, as touted by its supporters, it is certainly notable that until this year, the fundamental premises of communications law had not changed significantly since before television, when the dominant media were radio and telegraph.
The overall purpose of the 1996 Act, as enunciated in the Conference Report, is "to provide for a pro-competitive, deregulatory national policy framework designed to accelerate rapidly private sector deployment of advanced telecommunications and information technologies and services to all Americans by opening all telecommunications markets to competition."(fn5) [Emphasis added.] To achieve the objective of opening all telecommunications markets to competition, the Act seeks to eliminate legal barriers to cable companies entering the telephone business, telephone companies providing video programming, former Regional Bell Operating Companies providing long-distance service and entering manufacturing business, and vice versa.
Under the 1934 Act and its amendments, various court decisions and the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") regulations, the law controlled the location and type of service offered by companies. For instance, the Cable Act prohibited telephone companies from providing video programming to subscribers in their service areas, while at the same time limiting the cable operators' ability to acquire broadcast stations.(fn6) In the pivotal court decision in the AT&T divestiture case, the long-distance business was separated from local exchange service, and the national telephone monopoly divided into the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies, US West, Bell Atlantic and their sisters. The 1996 Act, however, aims to sweep all inter-industry prohibitions aside, aggressively leveling the legal landscape.
Of course, as history...
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